Benedict Cumberbatch, known for playing Marvel's Dr. Strange and the BBC's Sherlock Holmes, suggested in a recent interview that male actors — including himself — should turn down roles in productions in which women are not paid equally.

"Look at your quotas. Ask what women are being paid, and say: 'If she's not paid the same as the men, I'm not doing it,'" Cumberbatch said in an interview with Radio Times Sunday while promoting his latest series, "Patrick Melrose."

Cumberbatch hopes to enact this policy at his new production company, SunnyMarch, as well.

"I'm proud that [business partner] Adam [Ackland] and I are the only men in our production company," he said. "Our next project is a female story with a female lens about motherhood, in a time of environmental disaster. If it's centered around my name, to get investors, then we can use that attention for a raft of female projects."

He says that focusing on women-centric stories is both the right thing to do, and good business.

"Equal pay and a place at the table are the central tenets of feminism," said Cumberbatch, who has long spoken about his identity as a feminist.

Saturday, November 18, 2017

Michelle Williams is in talks to join Benedict Cumberbatch and Jake Gyllenhaal in the StudioCanal pic “Rio.”

“Call Me By Your Name” helmer Luca Guadagnino is directing from a script by Steven Knight.

The film follows a financial reporter (Gyllenhaal) who travels to Rio de Janeiro to visit a wealthy friend (Cumberbatch), only to get sucked into a plot to fake his friend’s death.

Studiocanal will finance and produce along with Cumberbatch and his Sunny March production company with Adam Ackland as well as Jake Gyllenhaal and Riva Marker who will produce through their Nine Stories banner.

A mesmerising, multi-generational tale exploring youth, middle-age and the inevitability of death is given a provocative flourish thanks to Hayley Atwell in recently resurfaced scenes from 2010 miniseries Any Human Heart.

The British actress strips off for a passionate love scene with co-star Matthew Macfadyen in the three part period drama, adapted from William Boyd’s 2002 novel of the same name.

Leaving little to the imagination, Hayley, 35, embraces her role as the flighty Freya Deverell, with whom MacFadyan’s existential protagonist Logan Mountstuart embarks on an all-encompassing affair.

The screen-lovers are seen working up a sweat as they writhe across a double bed, lost in the throes of passion, during one particularly heated tryst.

Sitting astride Macfadyen, Atwell smothers him with an embrace before leaning in for a series of fervent kisses.

Winning the Drama Serial gong at the 2011 British Academy Television Awards, Any Human Heart follows Mountstuart from exuberant adolescence to reclusive old age, charting his marriages, affairs, tragedies and triumphs along the way.

Martin Clunes has no immediate plans to retire Portwenn's grumpiest GP Doc Martin, despite claims that the much-loved show would be coming to an end after series nine.

The series 8 finale aired on ITV this week, which featured the very welcome return of Hollywood actress Sigourney Weaver as American tourist Beth Traywick. She delighted viewers as she appeared at the Cornish surgery for a meeting with Clunes's doctor Martin.

It had initially been reported that the show would end after series 8, then it was claimed that it would be concluding in 2018 with series 9.

But Clunes has told Digital Spy that the drama has only been commissioned by ITV until series 9, so it could continue beyond then depending on the plans of the broadcaster.

"That was the last one [series 9] we had commissioned," the actor explained. "We don't just decide to make it on our own, ITV have to commission it.

"And ITV has commissioned the ninth. We don't have a commission beyond that. Ask me again in two years."

On whether fans could expect any other Hollywood cameos in next year's series after the popular turn by Sigourney, the Men Behaving Badly star went on: "Harvey Keitel said he wanted to be in it, but only after he heard Sigourney was in it.

"I don't think he knows what it is anyway. One of our producers knows him, but I don't think it was serious. I don't think we wrote a part for him."